Robison Quarter 2 Independent Reading: making/using a bow drill, or trying at least

The Total Outdoors man Manual is a guide from which you can learn many different skills relating to camping, fishing, hunting, survival, as well as some from the 10 year outdoors man challenge. Things like this are something that i find interesting and can be fun to take a few hours to try out, or to develop over a longer time. The first thing that i tried was making a bow drill, and the manual says "Of all the friction fire-starting methods, the bow drill is the most efficient at maintaining the speed and pressure needed to produce a coal and the easiest to master"(T. Edward Nickens, project 356). I should note that the book just tells you part of the procedure, and doesn't give a full list of materials, this is just the best i could do.

After getting the different parts needed, and after putting them all together, my first try got nothing besides burnt wood, there was a good bit of heat, but no ember or fire to speak of. After about 10 minutes of trying to get something, I eventually swapped the thinner wooden dowel for a thicker one, and managed to get some smoke, and even with my grandfather's help, we could not get any trace of something burning. After around a full hour of trying different types of wood and taking turns using the drill, I decided that after so long without getting the results I was looking for, I decided to "cheat". Rather than a bow to spin the dowel rapidly, we filed down one end of the larger dowel and put it in a power drill. To see how that went, please see Easy outdoor fire starting part 1, Easy outdoor fire starting part 2, and Easy outdoor fire starting part 729, filmed by my dad.

Below are some pictures of the different stages of this project, before resorting to attaching the wooden dowel to a power drill.